Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever

Summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team. As a writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona. Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team’s Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where superstars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird debated the finer points of basketball. And he narrates a riveting account of the legendary intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game in history. In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world, its mystique has only grown. Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together and changed the future of sports—one perfectly executed fast break at a time.

“An Olympic hoops dream.”—Newsday “What makes this volume a must-read for nostalgic hoopsters are the robust portraits of the outsize personalities of the participants, all of whom were remarkably open with McCallum, both then and now.”—Booklist (starred review)

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Dream Team - Jack McCallum

Reviews

There’s power in a name. Shakespeare said it, millions of moms agonize over it before/after the birth of their children and the rise of Paris Hilton/the Kardashian brood all confirm that names alone can be enough to overcome/ignore things like objective reality to create a more powerful illusion.Just the name “the Dream Team” likely struck fear (and no small sense of awe) into its opponents. The name was apt: the team that took the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona — and, by extension, the world — by storm included 12 of the best basketball players of their era, at least a half dozen of those ranking among the greatest of all time, banding together as one team, united by their love of and pride in their country.A team that was so impossibly better than every other team, even in defeat their opponents would ask for autographs. Even during the game opposing players instructed their teammates on the bench to get a photograph (with a camera smuggled onto the bench) of Michael Jordan stealing the ball from them. And a team largely credited with boosting the game’s popularity internationally, directly attributable to the careers of such current stars as Manu Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki and Pau Gasol, to name but a few.This book, then, is … not really their story.It’s ostensibly their story. It’s supposed to be their story. But really it’s the story of one sports journalist (Jack McCallum) hanging around the players who would eventually become the Dream Team.That’s not to say it’s entirely devoid of interesting tidbits about the Olympics and the mighty Adonises who trampled the competition en route to the basketball gold medal. There are some behind-the-scenes tidbits about the hotel room, about Sir Charles Barkley’s evening/early morning ramblings (surprisingly tamer than you’d expect), and even some good old-fashioned gossip/backstabbing perpetuated on Isaiah Thomas, widely acknowledged to have been left off the team at the sole whim of one Michael Jordan.You can tell the book’s trajectory was off simply by tracing how much of it is devoted to the Dream Team playing basketball games. The answer, sadly, is “not much.” Of the book’s 36 chapters, we don’t even get to training camp until chapter 19, and we don’t get to Barcelona until well after chapter 28.If you’re just wanting to pick this up because you’re a general fan of basketball (and because Twitter didn’t exist in 1992 to give us the execrable minutiae of celebrities’ lives) and want to learn more about the background of Dream Team stars (as well as what John Stockton eats at the restaurant his father used to co-own), this is probably worth picking up. But if you’re looking for the whole story of the Dream Team — the games, the locker room rivalries, the in-depth analysis of getting the world’s best to play together as a team — you may just want to go watch the incredible documentary from NBA.tv.I imagine this tome at one time was simply supposed to a McCallum memoir before either he or his editor (who is quoted in the book as replying to McCallum’s supposed reluctance to put himself in the story with, “You can’t help it. You were along for the ride.”) decided that it would be a) easier marketing and b) more profitable to restructure it around the Dream Team in time for the 2012 Olympics.There’s nothing wrong with choosing to do that, but the book’s title is “Dream Team,” not “Jack McCallum’s brief recollection of the Dream Team along with some interviews conducted 20-odd years later.”That’s the trouble with names. They have the power to cow people over but, in the end, you have to be able to back them up.

I was raised a massive basketball fan, and remain one to this day, having graduated from watching games on the tiny TV on the porch (the TV being attached to the house by a giant bright orange extension cord) to cheering in the stands at the United Center. But while I loved and adored players like Michael Jordan and my beloved Scottie Pippen, I knew very little about them off the court, and almost nothing that went on behind the scenes of the Dream Team.This was a great read by an author who quite literally had the inside scoop, and shares his stories with a fun, sometimes biting wit, telling about everything from the greatest game ever played (that no one got to see) to what exactly went down when Michael and Scottie froze out Toni Kukoc. I highly recommend this book to basketball fans.

This book is a very readable account of the 1992 Dream Team. The author was with the team in '92 and then talked to each member about their experience 10 years later. A lot of the stories were familar, although still entertaining (i.e. anything involving Charles Barkley). I had seen the documentary film released at the same time (to coincide with the 2012 Olympics) and the film and this book cover practicaly all the same stories and issues. The book does go into better detail about the formation of the team and the ridiculous "controversy" on the medal stand involving the logo on their warm-ups. The book is very well written and McCallum's first hand account's are fantastic. My only complaint is that he seems to hold Larry Bird as an immortal, able to do or say no wrong. I agree Bird was a great player and seeminly a good person, but McCallum is critical of any player (Jordan and Magic ecspecially) who seek the limelight more than Bird. Overall the book is a must read for any basketball fan.

I have to say, I never liked the idea of allowing NBA players to go to the Olympics. I always liked the idea that America's college kids could still beat the best pros around the globe. I knew when it was first announce in '91 that the USA would completely destroy any foreign competition using the best from the NBA. Having said all that, I found Jack McCallum's Dream Team to be one of the most enjoyable sports books in years. McCallum has long been a terrific writer and this only cements his legacy. I loved the way he divided the book giving each team member and Coach Daly a chapter and then tying it all together throughout. There are countless, fascinating facts/stories that McCallum relates both from his time spent covering the Dream Team as well as recent interviews and other decades he covered along the way of so many Hall of Fame athletes. A really well written and fascinating account of not only the 1992 Dream Team but a great overview of some of the greatest players in NBA history.

I was not particularly impressed with this one. McCallum gives us predictable focus on the superstars, Bird, Johnson, Barkley, and Jordan, and a few tidbits about others. Any fan knows about Magic's need for attention, Mullin's alcoholism, Barkley's wild behavior, Jordan's scorn for his NBA teammates. There were a few entertaining bits, the best probably the story about C.M. Newton's wife. But there is no real flow; the book reads like a series of disjointed articles. McCallum himself is front and center more than is needed.

As huge Bulls fans from their glory days in the early 90s, I thought both my husband and I would enjoy this book. I haven't read it yet, but he did and he really enjoyed it. He said that there were some things that he already knew from the ESPN 2 hour special about this Olympic team but also great little nuggets that had him laughing out loud.For fans of 1990s basketball, this is the book for you.

While not a huge NBA follower, I pay enough attention to hope this book would be worth a look. I was in college during the Dream Team run and I don't have a lot of memories of it (other than "Angola's in trouble"). This in depth account was a very quick read and enjoyed the shorter chapters and interludes that made it easy to pick up and read in short bursts or longer if time permitted.There is very little in terms of game action which was actually fine with me. I didn't read the book for a play by play, although some of the details of the legendary scrimmage were worthwhile.In terms of players, I don't think I really learned a lot about Jordan and I'd seen the ESPN 30 special on Magic and Bird. Barkley gets a lot of face time for obvious reasons (he craves it), while others like Mullins and Stockton get less (because they don't). Overall, if you're a sports fan, particularly one that lived through this period of the NBA, I'd say it's worth a pick up.

This was a highly entertaining history of the 1992 Olympic Mens Basketball team. Unfortunately, it is also a much less entertaining history of Jack McCallum's time as NBA reporter. Nevertheless, it is a quick read for anyone who fondly remembers the Dream Team and provides background of their time together. One should note, however, that it is more of a history of everything surrounding the team, focusing more on pre-Barcelona events. It doesn't provide any of the box scores or any in-depth information about the games themselves, other than Barkley's elbowing of the Angola player and Jordan and Pippen's shutdown of Kukoc. But it does give the reader an inside view into how the players passed their time together and what their think was, both at the time and a decade later.

This is an interesting account of the members of the Dream Team and the experiences of a writer associated with it, but it has the capacity to turn readers off at the beginning with overt and repeated sexual references. These sexual references fade as the book progresses, thus making it not a theme of the book, and I have to question their value as a hook or lead-in. It's risky, to say the least.The other flaw which the book has, and which is fairly glaring, is that while it has a box score of the intrasquad scrimmage at the Monte Carlo, it fails to include the box scores from the actual Olympic Games--data which would have been intriguing to look at, to say the least!I was most impressed with Stockton and Mullin, least impressed with Drexler and Ewing, though the "Harry and Larry" storyline is interesting and it's not as though Ewing did anything bad--like Drexler did in implying that he was as good as or better than Jordan--he just failed to stick out in any meaningful way. Robinson impressed me. Michael and Magic I expected to be just what they were; same for Larry. Malone is exactly what you would think, and Barkley doesn't try to leave anybody guessing and never has. Pippen's very flawed. Laettner is not worth picking on; he was in a bad enough position as it was.Students of basketball history should definitely look at this piece but should also be critical of it and wary of many of its points, which are at times sensationalized. Additionally it would not be unlike me to mention grammar. McCallum uses the great word "protestations"--of course he means "protests," which is itself a noun--but mostly he is clean.

Since I've started writing on here, I've tried to use this site as a format to making my idiotic blathering a little more succinct. I wrote a very lengthy review of this one on Amazon, of which I will try to convey the most important points without going on and on (not that there's anything wrong with lengthy reviews on here, of course).The pros: McCallum was an insider, traveled with the team and had a great deal of access to the players, both at the time of the Olympics and at present time (all of the players granted more recent interviews for the book). It is well-written and easy to follow along with. There's not too much emphasis on the games themselves, but since all of them were blowouts, it's easy to see why they were glossed over. The different personalities meshing together are all interesting to read about, particularly Clyde Drexler who comes off as still being bitter about a lot of things. You learn a lot about the global impact that the Dream Team had and how they inspired many of the current foreign NBA stars to try their hands at the sport.The cons: There is WAY too much of McCallum himself in this book, to the point that you almost feel like he was rubbing it in that he was there and you weren't. He doesn't hesitate to let you know how often he had dinner or gambled with the players, that sort of thing. The other problem is probably more of my fault, but it's what made me want to read the book - I watched the NBA TV documentary before I read this, and this contains much of the same info as that film. The documentary is probably a little bit better executed, though, because you actually get to see the stories that take place, plus there isn't nearly as much of McCallum's presence lurking over things.Bottom line? Worth a read, but it's not quite the five-star masterpiece that I've seen other people bestow upon it. You might be better off watching the documentary.

"Ask Barkley about Jordan's greatness, and you'd be liable to get, 'Man, all I know is he's the blackest sumbitch I ever saw.' Ask Bird to comment on Magic's passing ability, and you'd be liable to get, 'I don't know. He hasn't passed me the ball yet." Maybe it was like that for the scientists, too; maybe if you got close, you'd hear, 'Hey Curie. Your last theorem? My chihuahua figured it out in five minutes.'"To be interested in reading Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever by Jack McCallum, you should be able to make it all the way through that title and have some idea of what it means. Even if you have cleared that first hurdle, you'll likely need to be a pro basketball nerd to enjoy this one. If you don't know who those people are, or what the Dream Team was (the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team, which let pros participate for the first time), do yourself a favor and skip this review.McCallum was on the inside, a respected writer for Sports Illustrated, who got to hang out with the players and coaches at clubs and casinos and hotel rooms and the "family room" and on and on, play cards and ping pong with them, and follow them on their unprecedented journey to the gold medal. The international hysteria over this team, often likened to the reception for the young Beatles, reaches absurd levels, like the Olympic teamers from other countries wanting to have their picture taken with a Dream Teamer more than even thinking about winning the game, and begging for their shoes and jerseys. The Dream Teamers in general handle it well, but there's always the unpredictable Charles Barkley, now an entertaining sports commentator, who "was at once the team's public relations nightmare and its greatest ambassador". He'd go off on unescorted adventures because security would just slow him down and interfere. Michael Jordan added to his legend, his fellow Hall of Famers unable to fathom his ability to play cards into the wee hours, sleep briefly, play 36 holes of golf, and then drop 35 points on some other Olympic team, dominating the game. While some briefly tried to keep up with him, no one could.The amazing level of play by the Dream Team (they won by an average 40 points per game) opened the eyes of children all over the world, who suddenly wanted to play basketball more than any other sport. All these years later, the National Basketball Association is filled with highly skilled foreign players like Dirk Nowitzki, a German who led Dallas to an NBA championship and was the finals MVP. Looking back, a number of foreign players said that they knew, after seeing the Dream Team, that they couldn't play at the level of these "gods", but they also knew they wanted to try.The book is full of fun anecdotes, including about the "Greatest Game Never Seen", the Dream Teamers playing against each other in a practice behind closed doors. All the competitiveness, all the trashtalking, all the pride, is on display, with Michael's team squaring off against Magic's. The Dream Team in the 1992 Olympics is a moment in history that will never be approached again, and, even with some unnecessary tangents and some labored writing, it was a joy to read this book about it.